Summer Time Reset with an Outsourced Finance Director

Summer is here – have you got that ‘feel good’ feeling yet? Have you been able to manage your business and a summer holiday?

It can be a time when perhaps the pressure mounts on you as the business owner as your staff take time off and there are fewer people to manage the work. That may be okay if your business also slows down in the summer.

But do you know if your business really does change over the summer months? Does it affect your order book, your turnover, and your profitability?

If it is impacted, then when does the business recover if it has slowed down and when does it become busy again?

If you happen to use seasonal staff as either demand is higher and the business is busier or to help support your permanent staff to take time off, then it is a must that you know when an external event or season impacts your business and how.

If your business does go a bit quieter then it could be a great time to upgrade your IT, upskill your employees or focus on product development.

Summer generally is a great time to sit back and reflect on what you’ve achieved in the year so far and on all those ideas that you want to implement. It can be great to bring some clarity and focus to what is a priority and must be done, what is a nice to have and what are the small building blocks or steps you can do each week to start to move your business forward.

By making small changes to your business or completing the steps that you have planned to get to where you want to be by the end of the year, be that in terms of profit/turnover growth, launching a new product, introducing more efficiencies to get some time back, it’s amazing how much does happen by slowly chipping away at the overall aim you’ve set.

But you do need to set time aside to plan out initially what your aim is that you want to achieve. It must be a really specific aim and it may have personal connotations linked to it, such as a better work/life balance. But that still isn’t specific enough.

What is a better work/life balance? Is it finishing at 4pm each day, or perhaps picking the kids up from school, or perhaps being able to take a holiday without having to check the work emails? Being really specific allows you to then work backwards and plan

• When you want to achieve this by – set an actual date
• What needs to change to you can achieve this
• Break down the changes that need to be made into monthly achievements
• Break down your monthly points into weekly and then your weekly into daily

It may be that it is 20-30 minutes each day to do one small task to help you work towards your aim. Now doesn’t that seem much more manageable and achievable then just saying “I want a better work/life balance”?

If that all seems like a lot to take on yourself then that is where we can step in, helping you to answer all these questions and others you might not have even considered.

As your outsourced Finance Director, we take the time to really get to know you and your business.  We go beyond the numbers for you. We carry out a detailed analysis of your figures, processes and workflows and present the conclusions in a simple, understandable, and actionable way, so you can manage your business with confidence.

As an outsourced Finance Director, we will: -

• Improve your decision-making by providing strategic management reports and recommended projects that with some investment will change your business
• Have access to experts you may not be able to afford on a full-time basis
• Provide external advice on how to stay compliant with new financial legislation
• Grow with your business, providing all the support you need as the business evolves
• Stay in regular, frequent contact with you and your business
• Ask challenging questions, increasing responsibility and accountability within your business, helping you plan for a better future

Book a strategy meeting with us now to review how you can make actionable changes in your business now and start taking your business to where you want it to be. Just click “Book a Discovery Call” on our website to chat Helen or Boo who have over 40 years of experience of making impactful change in businesses of all sizes.

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